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Blazing Saddles: A Wild and Crazy Ride
Blazing Saddles: A Wild and Crazy Ride
We live in the wild and crazy times and there’s little doubt that the wild ride which humanity is currently experiencing is going to get more severe, unpredictable and shocking. It’s not just the horrible reality of COVID-19 and the economic apocalypse it has unleashed which haunts us, but also the unending deluge of media overload which permeates our every waking moment.
A Meal With… Russell Distance Russell
A Meal With… Russell Distance Russell
We live in very unusual times and so I thought I would have supper with a Phuket resident who boasts one of the most unusual occupations on the island.
Blazing Saddles: Bikes ’n’ Beaches
Blazing Saddles: Bikes ’n’ Beaches
The morning of Tuesday, June 9 dawned with celestial pools of limpid blue sky interspersed with scudding rain clouds roiling around above the Big Buddha atop the Nakkerd Hills. But as we had been locked-in and disbarred from visiting any of Phuket’s glorious beaches for over two months, we were hell-bent on getting on our bikes and cycling to Nai Harn Beach, whatever the Gods of Monsoonal Chaos were conspiring to do with the weather.
Blazing Saddles: A breath of fresh air
Blazing Saddles: A breath of fresh air
Many of us have been gob-smacked by graphic images showing the dense air pollution disappearing all over the world, as we humans were forced into lockdown in an attempt to curtail COVID-19’s relentless march across our planet.
A Meal With… Craig Burton, putting diet facts on the table
A Meal With… Craig Burton, putting diet facts on the table
When I first started writing this “A Meal with…” column over three years ago, little did I anticipate one day finding myself sitting a well-measured two-plus metres away from my subject, with both of us wearing face masks. However, as what is colloquially termed the ‘Chinese Curse’ has it, we are indeed ‘living in interesting times’ and so we now find ourselves in all sorts of strange situations, doing all sorts of things we never imagined we would. 
Blazing Saddles: Let cycling conquer the COVID blues
Blazing Saddles: Let cycling conquer the COVID blues
We’ve been virally attacked and brought to our collective knees not just by a simple strand of RNA which wants to invade our cells so that it can reproduce, but by an unrelenting deluge of terrifying media information and misinformation. Both are threatening the very organic security, not to mention the collective sanity, of Homo Sapiens, and both are the product of the world which our choices and behaviours have created with all their arrogant disrespect for the miraculous natural systems which sustain us.
A Meal With: Fine dining gone viral
A Meal With: Fine dining gone viral
To say that we live in challenging times is a bit like saying Donald Trump may not be the smartest kid on the block – a huge understatement. The COVID-19 viral crisis has exploded with unprecedented speed and venom hitting every aspect of Phuket life, none more so than the all-important tourist industry and within that our once- thriving fine dining sector.
Blazing Saddles: Bicycling breakfast
Blazing Saddles: Bicycling breakfast
Bicycling and breakfast go irrevocably together… they are made for each other in a mutually-enhancing way. My own perfect Phuket morning starts with firstly earning that health-giving breakfast with an invigorating bike ride. My criteria for a pre-breakfast ride includes deep breaths of pure clean air, huge gulps of reviving water and fabulous ocean and mountain views, all of which help produce a natural hunger for a nourishing, protein-laced breakfast to restore body and brain.
A Meal With: Optimism 101 – The delights of the Nai Harn Resort
A Meal With: Optimism 101 – The delights of the Nai Harn Resort
Driving over to Nai Harn Beach to have lunch with Frank Grassmann, the friendly General Manager of the iconic Nai Harn resort which sits on a verdant hillside proudly overlooking those wondrous southern Phuket sands, I made a mistake!
Blazing Saddles: Cycling with Coconuts
Blazing Saddles: Cycling with Coconuts
I occasionally make the mistake of interrupting my tropical island idyll by tuning into BBC World Service over breakfast of a morning. It was on a cloudy day last week when I arose and, casting about for diversion, spotted my long-neglected TV brooding quietly in its corner. I approached it gingerly, dusted it off and flicked its waiting “on” switch, thereby allowing it to bring the outside world, also known as ‘reality’, into my living room.
A Meal With: Marc Landgraf Cluster General Manager of Paradise and TreeHouse Resorts on Koh Yao Noi
A Meal With: Marc Landgraf Cluster General Manager of Paradise and TreeHouse Resorts on Koh Yao Noi
In a region of the planet renowned for hyperbole and exaggeration, it is refreshing to be seated in a lovely beachside restaurant at the Paradise and TreeHouse Resort in a stunning location overlooking the breathtaking limestone karst spires of Phang Nga Bay while having supper with the genial resident General Manager Marc Landgraf.
Cycling in Paradise
Cycling in Paradise
Marc Landgraf the genial General Manager of Paradise Resort and TreeHouse Villas on Koh Yao Noi had kindly invited us to stay and sample the cycling trips they offer both their guests and visitors around the island. As we hadn’t cycled Koh Yao Noi for a few years, we seized this enticing offer with enthusiasm.
Blazing Saddles: Brainy bicycling
Blazing Saddles: Brainy bicycling
As if burning calories and improving cardio­vascular fitness and body strength weren’t enough, recent studies show the brain-boost­ing benefits of biking, which begs the ques­tion, does cycling improve your sanity?
A meal with Scot Toon, Managing Director – Asia for The Pavilions
A meal with Scot Toon, Managing Director – Asia for The Pavilions
The Pavilions group of exotic and highly in­dividualistic hotels and resorts may appear at first blush to be a mish-mash of uncon­nected properties without much of a uniting theme or vision. Yet, when you delve a little deeper into these sensational properties, you find that in fact an almost mystically bold vision unites them… that of finding “para­dise” here on earth.
Blazing Saddles: How jumping in the saddle can take our love lives up a gear
Blazing Saddles: How jumping in the saddle can take our love lives up a gear
Ask any advertising executive and they’ll tell you that using the words “sex or sexy” in an article will increase an ad’s readership by almost 100%. In fact, the article you are now perusing could well become the most widely-read in the long-running Blazing Saddles series, and you may well be one of many who has never previously read a Blazing Saddles article and indeed has very lit­tle interest in cycling!
Blazing Saddles: A lesson from Brisbane
Blazing Saddles: A lesson from Brisbane
Queensland’s capital city of Brisbane has a population of 2.4 million people, some four times the official figure for Phuket island. Yet driving around Brisbane, as I recently did, you would be forgiven for thinking you were in a quiet country town. The traffic flows efficiently and there’s rarely any bot­tlenecks or congestion with which to con­tend.
To E, or not to E? A time and a place for the electric bike
To E, or not to E? A time and a place for the electric bike
Like many cycling enthusiasts, I have long held a prejudice against electric bicycles. Somehow the whole idea of adding a motor of any kind into the primal equation of man, muscle and machine seemed just plain wrong and indeed a bit akin to, well, cheating.
The view from Koh Racha: A meal with Devan Bhaskaran
The view from Koh Racha: A meal with Devan Bhaskaran
It was a horribly hot, sticky Phuket morning at Chalong Pier. The assembled throng of tourists queuing for their boats seemed as fractious as the weather itself. Heavy and menacing thunder heads roiled above us, but refused to explode into relieving rain torrents.
A meal with the man that makes Kata rock: Richard Pope
A meal with the man that makes Kata rock: Richard Pope
Sitting poolside at the stunning Kata Rocks resort and villa development with Richard Pope overlooking Kata Beach and Boo Island, it’s hard not to feel rather overawed. This is, after all, a quintessential vision of tropical perfection with beautiful, white, luxurious villas standing tall upon a stunning rocky headland overlooking the Andaman Sea.
Blazing Saddles: Cycling to 70
Blazing Saddles: Cycling to 70
I have in my hand a slightly dog-eared, black and white photo of a smiling three-year-old me looking optimistically into the camera. I am sitting among blooming flowers in the back garden of the house in which I grew up in the English Midlands. Just out of frame is my first bicycle, red and yellow with a bashed mudguard. It seems that even at this tender age I’d already mas­tered the noble art of riding into things.